Fears that virus app won’t help without quick diagnosis

PEOPLE POSSIBLY infected with coronavirus need to be notified within 24 hours or risk the crucial contact tracing technology being ineffective, a key scientist advising the Government on its NHS Covid-19 app said.

Professor Christophe Fraser, senior group leader in pathogen dynamics at the University of Oxford’s Big Data Institute, said time was a main factor in the app helping contain the spread of coronavirus.

The smartphone download is being trialled on the Isle of Wight before its anticipated roll-out across the rest of the country later this month.

It is deemed crucial to the Government’s contact tracing programme, which will require smartphone users to download the app and share data the moment they test positive or display signs of Covid-19, with the app sending a notification to all mobile phone users in recent proximity to them advising them to self-isolate.

But Prof Fraser said speed was vital to ensure the technology’s efficacy, meaning those possibly infected needed to be notified within 24 hours of symptoms emerging in anyone with whom they have been in contact.

He said: “A 72-hour delay really means that you’re having very little impact on the epidemic.

“A 48-hour delay is pretty bad. “You really need to be getting the information across in 24 hours.”

Prof Fraser said data modelling suggested warnings being sent out within 24 hours could “make the difference between an epidemic starting to resurge towards the second wave or not”.

It came as the Financial Times reported NHSX, the health service’s digital technology arm behind the NHS Covid-19 app, sanctioned working with industry giants Apple and Google to develop a second app.

Prof Fraser said: “There are advantages to the Google/Apple system.

“They operate the operating system and it’s important to get the highest possible uptake.”

The professor continued: “It’s important that people feel confident and feel that the privacy concerns are being taken seriously and that the system collects as little information as it needs to function.”

It was announced that former TalkTalk chief executive Baroness Dido Harding has been appointed to lead the contact tracing programme crucial to easing the coronavirus lockdown.

Health Secretary Matt Hancock announced the Conservative peer would head the test, track and trace initiative to suppress the spread of coronavirus.